WHY THE AMERICANS ARE MORE ADDICTED
TO PRACTICAL THAN TO THEORETICAL SCIENCE

IF a democratic state of society and democratic institutions do not
retard the onward course of the human mind, they incontestably guide it
in one direction in preference to another. Their efforts, thus circumscribed,
are still exceedingly great, and I may be pardoned if I pause for a moment
to contemplate them.

I had occasion, in speaking of the philosophical method of the American
people, to make several remarks that it is necessary to make use of here.

Equality begets in man the desire of judging of everything for himself;
it gives him in all things a taste for the tangible and the real, a contempt
for tradition and for forms. These general tendencies are principally discernible
in the peculiar subject of this chapter.

Those who cultivate the sciences among a democratic people are always
afraid of losing their way in visionary speculation. They mistrust systems;
they adhere closely to facts and study facts with their own senses. As
they do not easily defer to the mere name of any fellow man, they are never
inclined to rest upon any man's authority; but, on the contrary, they are
unremitting in their efforts to find out the weaker points of their neighbors'
doctrine. Scientific precedents have little weight with them; they are
never long detained by the subtlety of the schools nor ready to accept
big words for sterling coin; they penetrate, as far as they can, into the
principal parts of the subject that occupies them, and they like to expound
them in the popular language. Scientific pursuits then follow a freer and
safer course, but a less lofty one.

The mind, it appears to me, may divide science into three parts.

The first comprises the most theoretical principles and those more abstract
notions whose application is either unknown or very remote.

The second is composed of those general truths that still belong to
pure theory, but lead nevertheless by a straight and short road to practical
results.

Methods of application and means of execution make up the third.

Each of these different portions of science may be separately cultivated,
although reason and experience prove that no one of them can prosper long
if it is absolutely cut off from the two others.

In America the purely practical part of science is admirably understood,
and careful attention is paid to the theoretical portion which is immediately
requisite to application. On this head the Americans always display a clear,
free, original, and inventive power of mind. But hardly anyone in the United
States devotes himself to the essentially theoretical and abstract portion
of human knowledge. In this respect the Americans carry to excess a tendency
that is, I think, discernible, though in a less degree, among all democratic
nations.

Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences or of
the more elevated departments of science than meditation; and nothing is
less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society. We
do not find there, as among an aristocratic people, one class that keeps
quiet because it is well off; and another that does not venture to stir
because it despairs of improving its condition. Everyone is in motion,
some in quest of power, others of gain. In the midst of this universal
tumult, this incessant conflict of jarring interests, this continual striving
of men after fortune, where is that calm to be found which is necessary
for the deeper combinations of the intellect? How can the mind dwell upon
any single point when everything whirls around it, and man himself is swept
and beaten onwards by the heady current that rolls all things in its course?

You must make the distinction between the sort of permanent agitation
that is characteristic of a peaceful democracy and the tumultuous and revolutionary
movements that almost always attend the birth and growth of democratic
society. When a violent revolution occurs among a highly civilized people,
it cannot fail to give a sudden impulse to their feelings and ideas. This
is more particularly true of democratic revolutions, which stir up at once
all the classes of which a people is composed and beget at the same time
inordinate ambition in the breast of every member of the community. The
French made surprising advances in the exact sciences at the very time
at which they were finishing the destruction of the remains of their former
feudal society; yet this sudden fecundity is not to be attributed to democracy,
but to the unexampled revolution that attended its growth. What happened
at that period was a special incident, and it would be unwise to regard
it as the test of a general principle.

Great revolutions are not more common among democratic than among other
nations; I am even inclined to believe that they are less so. But there
prevails among those populations a small, distressing motion, a sort of
incessant jostling of men, which annoys and disturbs the mind without exciting
or elevating it.

Men who live in democratic communities not only seldom indulge in meditation,
but they naturally entertain very little esteem for it. A democratic state
of society and democratic institutions keep the greater part of men in
constant activity; and the habits of mind that are suited to an active
life are not always suited to a contemplative one. The man of action is
frequently obliged to content himself with the best he can get because
he would never accomplish his purpose if he chose to carry every detail
to perfection. He has occasion perpetually to rely on ideas that he has
not had leisure to search to the bottom; for he is much more frequently
aided by the seasonableness of an idea than by its strict accuracy; and
in the long run he risks less in making use of some false principles than
in spending his time in establishing all his principles on the basis of
truth. The world is not led by long or learned demonstrations; a rapid
glance at particular incidents, the daily study of the fleeting passions
of the multitude, the accidents of the moment, and the art of turning them
to account decide all its affairs.

In the ages in which active life is the condition of almost everyone,
men are generally led to attach an excessive value to the rapid bursts
and superficial conceptions of the intellect, and on the other hand to
undervalue unduly its slower and deeper labors. This opinion of the public
influences the judgment of the men who cultivate the sciences; they are
persuaded that they may succeed in those pursuits without meditation, or
are deterred from such pursuits as demand it.

There are several methods of studying the sciences. Among a multitude
of men you will find a selfish, mercantile, and trading taste for the discoveries
of the mind, which must not be confounded with that disinterested passion
which is kindled in the heart of a few. A desire to utilize knowledge is
one thing; the pure desire to know is another. I do not doubt that in a
few minds and at long intervals an ardent, inexhaustible love of truth
springs up, self-supported and living in ceaseless fruition, without ever
attaining full satisfaction. It is this ardent love, this proud, disinterested
love of what is true, that raises men to the abstract sources of truth,
to draw their mother knowledge thence.

If Pascal had had nothing in view but some large gain, or even if he
had been stimulated by the love of fame alone, I cannot conceive that he
would ever have been able to rally all the powers of his mind, as he did,
for the better discovery of the most hidden things of the Creator. When
I see him, as it were, tear his soul from all the cares of life to devote
it wholly to these researches and, prematurely snapping the links that
bind the body to life, die of old age before forty, I stand amazed and
perceive that no ordinary cause is at work to produce efforts so extraordinary.

The future will prove whether these passions, at once so rare and so
productive, come into being and into growth as easily in the midst of democratic
as in aristocratic communities. For myself, I confess that I am slow to
believe it.

In aristocratic societies the class that gives the tone to opinion and
has the guidance of affairs, being permanently and hereditarily placed
above the multitude, naturally conceives a lofty idea of itself and of
man. It loves to invent for him noble pleasures, to carve out splendid
objects for his ambition. Aristocracies often commit very tyrannical and
inhuman actions, but they rarely entertain groveling thoughts; and they
show a kind of haughty contempt of little pleasures, even while they indulge
in them. The effect is to raise greatly the general pitch of society. In
aristocratic ages vast ideas are commonly entertained of the dignity, the
power, and the greatness of man. These opinions exert their influence on
those who cultivate the sciences as well as on the rest of the community.
They facilitate the natural impulse of the mind to the highest regions
of thought, and they naturally prepare it to conceive a sublime, almost
a divine love of truth.

Men of science at such periods are consequently carried away towards
theory; and it even happens that they frequently conceive an inconsiderate
contempt for practice. "Archimedes," says Plutarch, "was
of so lofty a spirit that he never condescended to write any treatise on
the manner of constructing all these engines of war. And as he held this
science of inventing and putting together engines, and all arts generally
speaking which tended to any useful end in practice, to be vile, low, and
mercenary, he spent his talents and his studious hours in writing only
of those things whose beauty and subtlety had in them no admixture of necessity."
Such is the aristocratic aim of science; it cannot be the same in democratic
nations

The greater part of the men who constitute these nations are extremely
eager in the pursuit of actual and physical gratification. As they are
always dissatisfied with the position that they occupy and are always free
to leave it, they think of nothing but the means of changing their fortune
or increasing it. To minds thus predisposed, every new method that leads
by a shorter road to wealth, every machine that spares labor, every instrument
that diminishes the cost of production, every discovery that facilitates
pleasures or augments them, seems to be the grandest effort of the human
intellect. It is chiefly from these motives that a democratic people addicts
itself to scientific pursuits, that it understands and respects them. In
aristocratic ages science is more particularly called upon to furnish gratification
to the mind; in democracies, to the body.

You may be sure that the more democratic, enlightened, and free a nation
is, the greater will be the number of these interested promoters of scientific
genius and the more will discoveries immediately applicable to productive
industry confer on their authors gain, fame, and even power. For in democracies
the working class take a part in public affairs; and public honors as well
as pecuniary remuneration may be awarded to those who deserve them.

In a community thus organized, it may easily be conceived that the human
mind may be led insensibly to the neglect of theory; and that it is urged,
on the contrary, with unparalleled energy, to the applications of science,
or at least to that portion of theoretical science which is necessary to
those who make such applications. In vain will some instinctive inclination
raise the mind towards the loftier spheres of the intellect; interest draws
it down to the middle zone. There it may develop all its energy and restless
activity and bring forth wonders. These very Americans who have not discovered
one of the general laws of mechanics have introduced into navigation an
instrument that changes the aspect of the world.

Assuredly I do not contend that the democratic nations of our time are
destined to witness the extinction of the great luminaries of man's intelligence,
or even that they will never bring new lights into existence. At the age
at which the world has now arrived, and among so many cultivated nations
perpetually excited by the fever of productive industry, the bonds that
connect the different parts of science cannot fail to strike the observer;
and the taste for practical science itself, if it is enlightened, ought
to lead men not to neglect theory. In the midst of so many attempted applications
of so many experiments repeated every day, it is almost impossible that
general laws should not frequently be brought to light; so that great discoveries
would be frequent, though great inventors may be few.

I believe, moreover, in high scientific vocations. If the democratic
principle does not, on the one hand, induce men to cultivate science for
its own sake, on the other it enormously increases the number of those
who do cultivate it. Nor is it credible that among so great a multitude
a speculative genius should not from time to time arise inflamed by the
love of truth alone. Such a one, we may be sure, would dive into the deepest
mysteries of nature, whatever the spirit of his country and his age. He
requires no assistance in his course; it is enough that he is not checked
in it. All that I mean to say is this: permanent inequality of conditions
leads men to confine themselves to the arrogant and sterile research for
abstract truths, while the social condition and the institutions of democracy
prepare them to seek the immediate and useful practical results of the
sciences. This tendency is natural and inevitable; it is curious to be
acquainted with it, and it may be necessary to point it out.

If those who are called upon to guide the nations of our time clearly
discerned from afar off these new tendencies, which will soon be irresistible,
they would understand that, possessing education and freedom, men living
in democratic ages cannot fail to improve the industrial part of science,
and that henceforward all the efforts of the constituted authorities ought
to be directed to support the highest branches of learning and to foster
the nobler passion for science itself. In the present age the human mind
must be coerced into theoretical studies; it runs of its own accord to
practical applications; and, instead of perpetually referring it to the
minute examination of secondary effects, it is well to divert it from them
sometimes, in order to raise it up to the contemplation of primary causes.

Because the civilization of ancient Rome perished in consequence of
the invasion of the Barbarians, we are perhaps too apt to think that civilization
cannot perish in any other manner. If the light by which we are guided
is ever extinguished, it will dwindle by degrees and expire of itself.
By dint of close adherence to mere applications, principles would be lost
sight of; and when the principles were wholly forgotten, the methods derived
from them would be ill pursued. New methods could no longer be invented,
and men would continue, without intelligence and without art, to apply
scientific processes no longer understood.

When Europeans first arrived in China, three hundred years ago, they
found that almost all the arts had reached a certain degree of perfection
there, and they were surprised that a people which had attained this point
should not have gone beyond it. At a later period they discovered traces
of some higher branches of science that had been lost. The nation was absorbed
in productive industry; the greater part of its scientific processes had
been preserved, but science itself no longer existed there. This served
to explain the strange immobility in which they found the minds of this
people. The Chinese, in following the track of their forefathers, had forgotten
the reasons by which the latter had been guided. They still used the formula
without asking for its meaning; they retained the instrument, but they
no longer possessed the art of altering or renewing it. The Chinese, then,
had lost the power of change; for them improvement was impossible. They
were compelled at all times and in all points to imitate their predecessors
lest they should stray into utter darkness by deviating for an instant
from the path already laid down for them. The source of human knowledge
was all but dry; and though the stream still ran on, it could neither swell
its waters nor alter its course.

Notwithstanding this, China had existed peaceably for centuries. The
invaders who had conquered the country assumed the manners of the inhabitants,
and order prevailed there. A sort of physical prosperity was everywhere
discernible; revolutions were rare, and war was, so to speak, unknown.

It is then a fallacy to flatter ourselves with the reflection that the
barbarians are still far from us; for if there are some nations that allow
civilization to be torn from their grasp, there are others who themselves
trample it underfoot.